LastMinuteLucie and the search for time

Posts tagged ‘design’

I am supposed to be sorting paperwork, but as I was up as early as usual, I have spent 2 hours finally making the laptop case that’s been in my head since Christmas.

I had been carrying my little laptop round in a padded envelope for a while and I thought to myself, ‘why not make a case from it?’

Of course, lovely as padded envelopes are, I am a fancy fabric girl and ( a shock to you I know) I had kept a dress of my daughter’s, (already upcycled from Lovely Husband’s Great Aunt’s skirt) that she had grown out of. The fabric was too gorgeous to give up so I decided to use it for this project.

I discovered some co-ordinating lining fabric in my stash and basically made a pillow case to slot the opened up envelopes into. Then I folded and sewed the edges together and turned it right side out to make a pretty padded envelope before topstitching some of the edges to hold them in place. A piece of elastic I’d saved from the waistband of a garment too worn to give away was perfect for holding the flap closed and to finish off I raided my braid box.

The bonus is that my little laptop can no longer lurk in dark places, laughing at me while I search for it – this bright wrapping will make it easy to find!!

I truly have had no time at all for blogging in the last 6 weeks of term – instead I have expended energy on being a better teacher. However, Oldest Daughter’s birthday rolled around again and with it her demands for a particular shaped / decorated cake.

I am beginning to feel that my daughter’s expectations are outstripping my expertise, but I gave it my best shot and, honestly, I am pretty chuffed with the outcome – even if she did say ‘Eeugh that icing looks gross’ as I was rolling it out, having spent time colouring and arranging it to blend in a tortie kind of way…

Ok that is a bit of an overstatement, but I certainly possess a lot of notebooks because I can’t resist buying them whether I need one right now or not PLUS I can’t let a free one pass me by.

Is there a word for stationery fetish? I am certainly suffering from it…

In a bid to save some money and use up my stock I had a good look through and decided that part of the reason I am not choosing to use some of them immediately is because they are not the most beautiful notebooks in the pile. I decided to give them a makeover!

I was using duct tape recently for another craft project and thought to myself, ‘ I know I could use a bit for this!’

Here are the results:

this one was hardback – I simply added a band of orange, some Sharpie patterns and orange paper ends inside.

This one I strengthened the cover of as it was just a paper front. On top of the weighting I used duct tape to go round the whole book – even over the spiral binding which I had covered with an old advertising leaflet. It still opens and shuts well and looks much more appealing!

I start back at Guides this week and in keeping with tradition, we often look at resolution making in January. It’s not always personal – sometimes we look at them in terms of the things they would like to try at Guides during the year.

In the past we have written ourselves letters, sealed until the end of the year, and made little matchbooks, but this year I decided to go with the firework scheme. I recently came across Popplet, which I think is a very cool mind mapping tool and I had been toying with a lesson plan to do with resolutions. In doing so came up with 5 strands to make it less intimidating to children:

something I will do less of

something I will do more of

something I will do with my friends

something I will do at home

something I will do at school (or work if you are grown up).

As you can see by the image, I have used black card – this is A5 – and glitter glue in the center for the 2015.

Strips of colour are applied (perfect for using up those scraps of coloured paper we (I) have hanging around) – these are the pretty bit of the firework and hold your resolutions – small to keep things short and to the point – and white pen was used to add drama.

I put a paper ribbon on the top for hanging. Will let you know how these went down at Guides!

I have been very good. My friends are impressed by my devil-may-care attitude to disposing of superfluous paperwork at the end of a Pack Holiday (ok, apart from the washing up songs list I insisted Brown Owl laminate for another camp – well, we had the laminator with us…)

However, in the spirit of being very pleased with my work and that of the other Owls I photographed my contribution to the information wall – I give you( drum roll please) the Brownie Pack Holiday Six Job Rota: